Meet the Maker: Carter + Rose

My dad is a woodworker and my mom is a gardener. I grew up with creativity all around me and being from a hands-on family influenced my life and aesthetic profoundly. I started Carter + Rose in 2015 and it has become an incubator for my creativity and the foundation of getting my products out into the world. For me, being an artist is about seeing creativity all around, all the time, and passing it on in big and small ways. In this way, I am proud to be raising two tough, creative, smart and funny daughters who make more of a mess in my studio than I do, and knowing the creative cycle will continue into the next generation.

I was an art teacher for 7 years and loved teaching ceramics to kids. It is fun to smoosh, it is fun to form, and it is fun to glaze! I realized that after class time ended, I often wanted to work with clay myself. My love of clay grew and I decided to focus on making handmade products, first designing dishware and then, Carter + Rose's signature design: the hanging wall planter.

When I opened Carter + Rose in 2015, I was inspired to create home decor for everyone! I was also inspired to use scraps and have a no waste studio. Our wall planters and ceramic snakes were both born from scrap clay and have evolved from there. They both focus on simple, clean lines that are accessible and unique. By using a variety of clays and glazes, I think there is a colorway or snake friend for a nook or desk in most homes!

I adore making our ceramic snakes. I love hand rolling out the clay to a perfect pointy tail, and then wiggling it into its form, and pressing the snake head shape between my fingers. There is something so satisfying about the simplicity and perfection of the motion my hands make.

For all the handmade items out there, even the ones that seem simple, they're not! They all start with an idea, followed by hours of practice, then it's trial and error and testing. The price of a handmade item is also the cost of the creative process, the time it takes to form ideas, and the hours it takes to continually create them, over and over again until they have become a beautiful, finalized product.